Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 06:00:58 -0700
To start with you have annoying whiny Kristen Stewart type chick at some upscale high school, maybe in some kind of Aspen-like town in the Rocky Mountains. She's moping around or whatever when some new kid shows up. He's all pasty and his hair is kind of silvery. She finds out why one night when some mysterious thing starts chasing her. The hot guy shows up and turns into a big silver dragon and saves her. Then he starts telling her about dragons who live in the mountains or whatever and how they can come down as humans when they want. And they're falling madly in love and whatnot.
Some other hawt dude shows up at school too. He's darker and kind of pissed off. He tells the chick that the silver dragon is using her because she has something or some hidden talent they need to regain their place as rulers of the world or whatever. He represents the other dragon faction (black, red, bronze? whatever) and they want her to help them stop the silver ones.
In the end there's a big dragon fight over the annoying chick and whatever hidden talent or whatnot is revealed and of course the silver dragon turns out to be the good guy. The other one is defeated but not killed because we need sequels!
I was thinking as far as the something or hidden talent you can go two ways:
- The Transformers way where Kristen Stewart chick inadvertently has possession of some magic thing, like part of a special dragon egg shell or something that's been passed down from generation to generation until it winds up in her hands, though she thinks it's just something purdy.
- The Matrix way where Kristen Stewart chick is the Chosen One because a bunch of generations ago some important dragon got busy with one of her ancestors and that gives her the power to rule over and unite the dragons or something. Maybe she could even become a dragon later on!
We should post this on a forum so that some writer out there could do this. I couldn't write it because it would quite frankly make me nauseous.
Now go use this and make billions!!!
Another idea I thought of while watching MST3K vs. Gamera: Has anyone ever written a monster movie story from the perspective of the monster? Wouldn't it be neat to know what Godzilla is thinking about when he's smashing Tokyo?
LOL thanks for the shout out. I really do think that a lot of YA is this simple though. I mean you get two people like you and I that see through all the hype and bullshit and write a plot structure down and then hand it off to some grad student who has the fire to "git er done". I think this is what James Frey has done with his fiction factory and the "I Am Number Four" franchise.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of shocking how formulaic the YA plots getting book deals happen to be these days.
See, now this is my favorite post since the move over. The problem with dragons is that they have to be more expensive to produce than a guy that sparkles. You can't do this for a measly $50 million or so - this has to be big time.
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe not, they made that dragon movie a couple of years ago, dragon wars, and it had a small budget. So, my entire point is invalidated. I won't delete it though. Typing on my phone is still more work than it should be.
That movie sucked though, and I don't mean it sucked like Cloverfield sucked, I mean it really sucked. Like Battlefield Earth, but worse.
Okay, A: Your Dragon Love YA Trilogy ought to be written because you'll make millions and if you're going to write it at least make it good.
ReplyDeleteB: Why not be meta and call her hidden power the "MacGuffin?" and
C: I like your Monster-view Movie even better. Write that!
Well Rusty I was thinking of this as a book. After Dragon Twilight makes a billion dollars then we'll let someone else worry about the movie.
ReplyDeleteYEAH! You can call it "Fyrelight: The Beginning." Because they don't breathe straightforward fire, they breathe "fyre", which is like normal fire but impossible to put out unless another dragon does it. This crap practically writes itself!
ReplyDeleteThere should also be a Hagrid-like old timer that lives on the outskirts of town. Everyone thinks he/she is mad, but of course, they're actually a fallen dragon/ former dragon/ expert in the field.
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS are coming your way if you write this.
That book that came out this past summer, Robopocalypse (or whatever) was in production as a movie well before the book was even turned in to the publisher. I suppose that if the house is owned by a media company then they might as well do it all at once.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, good luck with the dragon princess tale. It smells like a hit.
I've actually seen something like this -almost- done except it was some kind of romance crap and not YA. I think it was in the paranormal romance section, even. And, no, I don't read that kind of stuff... it had to do with my wife, and I ended up reading it instead of her because... you know, nevermind, the explanation is really more complicated then it's worth.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think someone should do dragons; although, I have an issue with dragons that change into humans, because, you know, what happens to all the extra mass?
Still...
Come on Andrew, it's magyck!
ReplyDeleteWell, yeah, but...
ReplyDeleteThat works in a magic setting, like Dragonlance, but I don't buy it in a real world setting where people are trying to explain things with real world answers. Like vampirism being a virus or whatever.
Definitely the Chosen One who also finds the Thing that makes her extra attractive and extra special to the dragon guy or whatever.
ReplyDeleteI confess I liked the movies. Every teenager in my daughter's school read the book - like 4000 kids all at the same time. Kind of an amazing thing. No?